Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
im not able to fully tease it out but how were the puritans and presbyterians that different?
How were the 'puritans' different from scotch irish? Is that just to say they lived in england proper?
Both churches were reformed and influenced by calvinism (just like the presbyterians).
1. reformed
2. inspired by calvin
3. conflict with the church of england
edit i use scotch-irish and presbyterian interchangeably but at the time national and religious identity were closely coupled and I think we can all i agree the 'scotch-irish' were mainly presbyterian.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,688,469 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by carolinadawg2
Curious as to what you mean by that?
I'd like to know, too. The Puritans went to Massachusetts from the Netherlands. The Scotch-Irish primarily went to Philadelphia from Ulster Province. I'm not seeing a tie-in there. The only link that I can see is William of Orange, but I don't think that it's anything other than an accidental link.
Well, the scots-irish were presyterian, but they lived lives very different from the puritans. Culturally, they couldn't be more different.
You might enjoy the book "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America". It provides a lot of background and information about the various groups who settled this country, and how those groups and settlement patterns influences still.
Last edited by carolinadawg2; 01-11-2016 at 09:05 AM..
I'd like to know, too. The Puritans went to Massachusetts from the Netherlands. The Scotch-Irish primarily went to Philadelphia from Ulster Province. I'm not seeing a tie-in there. The only link that I can see is William of Orange, but I don't think that that it's anything other than an accidental link.
Both were english reformed churches inspired by Calvin.
Well, the scots-irish were presyterian, but they lived lives very different from the puritans. Culturally, they couldn't be more different.
in what sense?
I mean there is some timing difference in migration
i mean in another sense presbyterians were puritan as well as they saw themselves as reformers
are you making a distinction between presbyterian and congregationalists?
I would say this is a fair blurb i found online:
"
The Puritans were a varied group of religious reformers who emerged within the Church of England during the middle of the sixteenth century. They shared a common Calvinist theology and common criticisms of the Anglican Church and English society and government. Their numbers and influence grew steadily, culminating in the English Civil War of the 1640s and the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. With the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Puritanism went into eclipse in England, largely because the movement was identified with the upheaval and radicalism of the Civil War and Cromwell’s tyrannical government, a virtual military dictatorship.
But it persisted for much longer as a vital force in those parts of British North America colonized by two groups of Puritans who gradually cut their ties to the Church of England and formed separate denominations. One group, the Congregationalists, settled Plymouth in the 1620s and then Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the 1630s. Another group, the Presbyterians, who quickly came to dominate the religious life of Scotland and later migrated in large numbers to northern Ireland, also settled many communities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century.
Puritans in both Britain and British North America sought to cleanse the culture of what they regarded as corrupt, sinful practices. They believed that the civil government should strictly enforce public morality by prohibiting vices like drunkenness, gambling, ostentatious dress, swearing, and Sabbath-breaking. They also wished to purge churches of every vestige of Roman Catholic ritual and practice—the ruling hierarchies of bishops and cardinals, the elaborate ceremonies in which the clergy wore ornate vestments and repeated prayers from a prescribed liturgy. Accordingly, New England’s Congregational churches were self-governing bodies, answerable to no higher authority; mid-Atlantic Presbyterian churches enjoyed somewhat less autonomy because a hierarchy of “presbyteries” and “synods” made up of leading laymen and clergymen set policy for individual congregations. But both Congregationalist and Presbyterian worship services were simple, even austere, and dominated by long, learned sermons in which their clergy expounded passages from the Bible. Perhaps most important, membership in both churches was limited to the “visibly godly,” meaning those men and women who lead sober and upright lives. New England Congregationalists adopted even stricter standards for admission to their churches—the requirement that each person applying for membership testify publicly to his or her experience of “conversion.” (Many Presbyterians also regarded conversion as central to being a Christian, but they did not restrict their membership to those who could profess such an experience.)
"The Scotch-Irish were not, contrary to frequent assumption, a people who resulted from the intermarriage of Scots and Irish in Ulster. Most, but by no means all, were of Lowland Scottish or northern English ancestry and perhaps two-thirds were of Presbyterian tradition (others being Anglican, Quaker, or Catholic), having forebears who crossed the Irish Channel following King James I's Ulster Plantation of the early 1600's and who settled primarily in four counties on Ireland's northeastern coast."
There were also many Highland Scots who came into NC via Wilmington and settled the Cape Fear River watershed in southeastern NC: North Carolina History Project : Highland Scots I am descended from these people, and my grandmother always said we were "Scotch Irish". I'm not sure if the Irish part was due to intermarriage after arriving in America, or if it happened before they left Europe. Regardless, this group is different from the ones who came to NC via Philadelphia and other northern places as described earlier in this thread. They had large populations in Richmond, Scotland, Hoke, Cumberland counties, and points east/southeast of there. You'll still find many "Mc..." last names in the region.
I'm from SE NC as well and over the holiday I saw a cousin into geneology had a copy of the actual landgrant from the king of england giving X3 or so grandfather land in SE NC...pretty cool! He was a merchant shipper or something..
I mean there is some timing difference in migration
i mean in another sense presbyterians were puritan as well as they saw themselves as reformers
are you making a distinction between presbyterian and congregationalists?
I would say this is a fair blurb i found online:
"
The Puritans were a varied group of religious reformers who emerged within the Church of England during the middle of the sixteenth century. They shared a common Calvinist theology and common criticisms of the Anglican Church and English society and government. Their numbers and influence grew steadily, culminating in the English Civil War of the 1640s and the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. With the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Puritanism went into eclipse in England, largely because the movement was identified with the upheaval and radicalism of the Civil War and Cromwell’s tyrannical government, a virtual military dictatorship.
But it persisted for much longer as a vital force in those parts of British North America colonized by two groups of Puritans who gradually cut their ties to the Church of England and formed separate denominations. One group, the Congregationalists, settled Plymouth in the 1620s and then Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the 1630s. Another group, the Presbyterians, who quickly came to dominate the religious life of Scotland and later migrated in large numbers to northern Ireland, also settled many communities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century.
Puritans in both Britain and British North America sought to cleanse the culture of what they regarded as corrupt, sinful practices. They believed that the civil government should strictly enforce public morality by prohibiting vices like drunkenness, gambling, ostentatious dress, swearing, and Sabbath-breaking. They also wished to purge churches of every vestige of Roman Catholic ritual and practice—the ruling hierarchies of bishops and cardinals, the elaborate ceremonies in which the clergy wore ornate vestments and repeated prayers from a prescribed liturgy. Accordingly, New England’s Congregational churches were self-governing bodies, answerable to no higher authority; mid-Atlantic Presbyterian churches enjoyed somewhat less autonomy because a hierarchy of “presbyteries” and “synods” made up of leading laymen and clergymen set policy for individual congregations. But both Congregationalist and Presbyterian worship services were simple, even austere, and dominated by long, learned sermons in which their clergy expounded passages from the Bible. Perhaps most important, membership in both churches was limited to the “visibly godly,” meaning those men and women who lead sober and upright lives. New England Congregationalists adopted even stricter standards for admission to their churches—the requirement that each person applying for membership testify publicly to his or her experience of “conversion.” (Many Presbyterians also regarded conversion as central to being a Christian, but they did not restrict their membership to those who could profess such an experience.)
"
To be clear, I'm talking cultural differences, not religious ones. The highlighted sentence points out some of the cultural differences. The scots-irish were wild and wooly frontier types, who distrusted almost all government or central authority. They were clannish, hostile to outsiders, made moonshine and lived in crude cabins. The puritans would have been appalled by their lifestyle.
hmm that's a fair point but i would chalk it up to more semantic differences. I mean the scotch-irish immigration was a lot more carte blanche whereas puritans as we know it were smaller more religious hardliners. So it's not exactly apples to apples. Not to mention the time gap in immigration waves here.
But you know on that point I think there is some residue I mean it gets at the spirit of the whole bible belt distinction of the south and why I can't buy beer on sunday morning.
I mean people aren't exactly calling Massachusetts the bible belt today.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
